In the graphic arts field, there has been a strong demand for shortening the vacuumizing time of a contact printer for the light-sensitive material exposure; in other words, for the development of a light-sensitive material that can be exposed with no problem even within 10 minutes of vacuumizing time of the vacuum contact printer in the contact printing process.
To solve the above problem, Japanese Patent Publication Open to Public Inspection (hereinafter abbreviated to JP O.P.I.) Nos. 91738/1991 and 127049/1991 propose techniques to improve the light-sensitive material's touchableness in vacuum contacting by the combination of having the light-sensitive material substantially contain a relatively large particle size matting agent and drying it under slow drying conditions.
However, the recent movement to shorten working hours and time for delivery results in a demand for shortening the processing time. The shortening of the processing time largely deteriorates the dryness of the processed light-sensitive material. To solve this problem, the amount of gelatin as the binder was reduced, and to shorten the vacuumizing time, a large particle size matting agent was used. However, reducing the amount of gelatin causes the coated layer to be thin, and besides, the use of a large particle size matting agent caused the agent to be buried in the emulsion layer, and as a result it clearly increased the number of the pinholes caused thereby. The more the silver saving is exerted for making the most of resources, the more badly the number of pinholes caused by a matting agent increases.
To get rid of the pinhole trouble, an attempt was made to divide the layer to contain a matting agent provided upon the emulsion layer, normally protective layer, into two sublayers, of which the upper sublayer had a matting agent incorporated therein to thereby restrain the matting agent from being buried in the emulsion layer, and further a slow drying condition was used in combination, whereby the improvement was to have been achieved, but the attempt was in vain, particularly it has been found that when the coating silver weight is not more than 3.0 g/m.sup.2, little improving effect can be obtained. Thus, there is urgently needed a technique for improving the light-sensitive material to be free from the pinhole trouble without deteriorating its vacuum touchableness even in the case where gelatin reduction is made.